If you are using Internet Explorer 10
(or later), you might find some of the links I have used won't work properly
unless you switch to 'Compatibility View' (in the Tools Menu); for IE11 select
'Compatibility View Settings' and then add this site (anti-dialectics.co.uk). I have as yet no idea how
Microsoft's new browser, Edge, will handle these links.

If your Firewall/Browser has a pop-up blocker, you
will need to press the "Ctrl" key at the same time or these links won't work,
anyway!

I have adjusted the
font size used at this site to ensure that even those with impaired
vision can read what I have to say. However, if the text is still either too
big or too small for you, please adjust your browser settings!

~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~

As is the case with all my Essays, nothing here should be read as an attack
either on Historical Materialism [HM] -- a theory I fully accept --, or,
indeed,
on revolutionary socialism. I remain as committed to the self-emancipation of the
working class and the dictatorship of the proletariat as I was when I first became a revolutionary
nearly thirty years ago. [The
difference between Dialectical Materialism [DM] and HM, as I see it, is explained
here.]

Thanks for your reply Jurriaan, but you seem to think I do not know this:

a dialectical contradiction differs from a logical contradiction....

For the last 25 years or more, I have been reading and studying the material
dialecticians have been churning out (over the last two centuries), and have yet
to see a clear explanation of the latter of these two uses of the word
"contradiction". Let's see how you get on:

From a logically contradictory type of statement anything can follow. A
dialectical contradiction describes a situation in which a condition co-exists
meaningfully with another condition, in such a way that although the one is the
opposite of the other, it also presupposes the other. The dialectical
contradiction is 'held in place' by the fact that it is mediated by something,
or contained by something else.

Well, Marx added that the two
interconnected 'halves' of a 'dialectical contradiction' "mutually exclude one
another". If that is so, then they cannot exist together, which means they cannot 'contradict' one another in the way you
require. On the other hand, if they do 'contradict' one another, and both exist
at the same time (perhaps as opposing forces, or determinations (depending on
how you give them physical being)), then they cannot "mutually exclude" one
another.

Jurriaan:

a dialectical contradiction differs from a logical contradiction in that a
logical contradiction is basically a formal
inconsistency of meaning, evaluated according to certain inferential rules
of propositional logic.... In formal logic we call this either a paradoxical
statement, or a nonsensical statement.

Alas, dialecticians are always making this mistake. An inconsistency, in its
simplest form, involves two propositions which cannot both be true, but they can
both be false, whereas a contradiction involves two propositions that cannot
both be true and cannot both be false. So, in logic no contradiction (sans
phrase) is an inconsistency, nor vice versa.

And this is incorrect, too:

In formal logic we call this either a
paradoxical statement, or a nonsensical statement.

Well a paradox might lead to a contradiction, but the two are quite distinct,
and no contradiction can be nonsensical, otherwise we'd not be able to
understand it to see if it is contradictory or not.

Jurriaan:

But in fact in practical life we encounter such dialectical contradictions all
the time, and there is nothing particularly mysterious about it.

I'd like to see an example!

But you helpfully gave us one:

To illustrate: I work as a public servant for a local government bureaucracy
obliged by oath to follow the rules, yet if I tried to conduct myself only and
exclusively according to consistent rules, analogous to a computer programme or
a machine, I would find this practically impossible to operate, and my activity
would be quickly paralysed. I find myself constantly confronted with dialectical
contradictions I have to negotiate, sometimes a bit like a "catch-22" situation.

Now the interesting thing in this example is that even although I cannot
practically act, only and exclusively, according to consistent rules and
survive, nevertheless most people do not regard my behaviour as essentially
arbitrary, irrational and random. Some of it might be, but most of it is not.
They recognise it has a non-arbitrary pattern. And not only that; they can also
make correct and valid inferences from my behaviour, even although my behaviour
is not following any given rule. One could even say that much of my behaviour is
predictable, even although does not involve executing a rule.

And yet you failed to tell us what the 'dialectical contradiction' is here!

Jurriaan:

From this kind of insight you can learn that there are forms of reasoning
(inferential processes) which, although they do not conform to deductive logic,
and do not lead to only one conclusion, are nevertheless non-arbitrary, and very
meaningful. The reason why they are non-arbitrary is because they 'rule in' some
possibilities, and 'rule out' others; some things cannot follow and are ruled
out, the number of things that can follow are limited, and some things are more
likely to be the case than others -- and all this, even although there is not
just one logically compelling conclusion from the reasoning, but several. Again
this is a rather obvious insight, but the question now is 'why this is so', how
that works, how we could model or describe that. There are many different trends
of thought about this (pragmatism, para-consistency, fuzzy logic etc.) and
dialectics is one of those trends. One sort of answer is that ordinary language
itself, although reasonable, does not conform to formal logic, and therefore
that an association can be meaningful and non-arbitrary, without being logical.

Yes, I know about "fuzzy logic" and "informal logic", but I fail to see how this
helps anyone understand the obscure phrase "dialectical contradiction".

Jurriaan:

We can also approach the problem from another angle. Deductive logic has severe
limits, since P follows 'if' Q is the case, and that can be a very big 'if. A
deductive argument cannot compel us to induce all the premises it contains, it
can tell us only that if we induce certain premises then the conclusion follows.
Thus deductive logic only specifies the conditions for making consistent sense;
the inductions into the deduction process may be reasonable, but not logically
compelling. Therefore, in practice we are always forced to apply two criteria of
truth, namely correspondence and coherence, but in applying these criteria we
additionally assume a context which exists beyond those criteria. If you pursue
this line of thought, you find that actually it is possible to make a very large
number of true statements about one object, using various criteria, without
necessarily being able to say that one statement is more true than another, or
without there being clear criteria for choosing between them, or how they would
fit together.

Once more, whatever the limitations of formal logic are (and from the above I am
far from convinced you have a firm grasp of the subject), this in no way helps us
understand the phrase "dialectical contradiction".

Jurriaan:

The question then is whether there are some meta-criteria of meaning and
reason, captured by basic categorizations, which would allow us to order the
whole of the truths we have discovered about an object in a non-arbitrary
synthesis, such that through a series of conceptualizations, the truth about the
object 'explains itself', becomes 'self-explanatory'. The dialectician would say
'yes', this is possible, we can discover those criteria, but it is not possible
to do so by means of deductive inference only, not only because we somehow have
to induce premises non-arbitrarily, but also because we need to refer to a
meaningful context not provided by the deductions and inductions themselves. We
need to start both with what the object is, and what it is not (its negation),
and constantly elaborate further what it is and is not, and this involves
explicating the dialectical contradictions involved with the object, how these
are mediated and resolved, how they give rise to new contradictions. At the
conclusion it is proved that, provided a certain starting assumption is made
about what the object is and is not, this assumption will validate itself, by
showing that it provides non-arbitrary means to integrate all truths about the
object consistently, in such a way that the truth about the object 'explains
itself', that its full meaning is understood.

This is merely to say that the dialectical procedure aims to understand the full
meaning of the object of study and relativise it appropriately, using
meta-criteria to order truth-coherences and truth-correspondences in an rigorous
interpretation, which goes beyond formal logical procedures although it utilizes
them. The question then remains, whether dialectical properties are just a
characteristic of the meaningful universe that human beings generate themselves
(a human way of understanding), or whether dialectical characteristics indeed
exist mind-independently as objective social realities or objective physical
realities. A realist dialectician argues that indeed dialectical features exist
objectively in nature and society, since human dialectical meanings have
originally evolved out of, and in relationship to, those objectively existing
dialectical features ('mind' has evolved out of 'matter'). If we say for example
that 'mind and body are a unit' or a 'whole', we cannot really say that the mind
features dialectical characteristics, while the body doesn't.

Well, there is much here I could take issue with, but I won't since it is not
directly connected with the challenge I raised to Andrew [Kliman]-- what the hell is a
(Marxist) 'dialectical contradiction'? -- but I notice you keep helping yourself
to the phrase "dialectical contradiction" when it is still far from clear what
they are. [Much of the above comment of yours in fact constitutes an Idealist analysis, anyway --,
unless, of course, you can give it a materialist twist somehow. And, good luck
with that one! Nobody has succeeded on that score in the last 150 years.]

Jurriaan:

However it is not possible to write a dialectical 'rule book' like Marxists try
(see above), the question is only whether you can discover the dialectical
characteristics of a subject matter by means of a comprehensive analysis of all
it contains. The dialectician claims, that if you are prepared to delve
sufficiently deeply and systematically into the subject matter, you will sooner
or later confront the dialectical relationships beneath the apparent logical
paradoxes and puzzling relationships in the subject matter. However, even if you
can prove that a dialectical contradiction objectively exists, dialectical
thinking does not of itself offer any logical or empirical proofs. It merely
claims that 'if' a certain assumption is adopted, or 'if' you see the subject
matter this way, then it becomes self-explanatory, and makes integral scientific
sense.

Thanks for that, but I am no clearer -- and since I am interested in a Marxist
analysis of this obscure phrase, I'm not sure you are the person to help me.

And the Einstein quote you added seems to confirm that you are indeed an
Idealist, like he was.

Up until Jurriaan's
intervention, the debate at MHI had largely been measured and reasonable.
Indeed, readers will, I hope, note that I am unusually polite and respectful in
the above reply, just as they will recall these words that I added to the
opening page of this site (bold added):

The above page contains links to forums on the web where I have 'debated' this creed
with other comrades.

For anyone
interested, check out the desperate 'debating' tactics used by Dialectical
Mystics in their attempt to respond to my ideas.

You
will no doubt notice that the vast majority all say the same sorts of things, and
most of them pepper their remarks with scatological and abusive language. They
all like to make things up, too, about me and my beliefs.

25
years (!!) of this stuff from Dialectical Mystics has meant I now take an
aggressive stance with them every time -- I soon learnt back in the 1980s that
being pleasant with them (my initial tactic) did not alter their abusive tone,
their propensity to fabricate, nor reduce the amount of scatological language
they used.

So, how was my attempt
to be polite received? Yes, you guessed it! Jurriaan soon became
highly emotional, abusive, and began to use yet more of the 'by-now-obligatory'
scatological language!

"Rosa" (she or
he is talking cowardly from behind a pseudonym) claims:

Well, Marx
added that the two interconnected 'halves' of a 'dialectical contradiction'
"mutually exclude one another". If that is so, then they cannot exist together,
which means that cannot 'contradict' one another in the way you require. On the
other hand, if they do 'contradict' one another, and both exist at the same time
(perhaps as opposing forces, or determinations (depending on how you give them
physical being)), then they cannot "mutually exclude" one another.

But this is a
petitio principii, Rosa just assumes what has to be proved. I defined a
dialectical contradiction very clearly, as two opposite conditions which
nevertheless presuppose each other and depend on each other for their existence,
a situation which can exist because the opposition of the two conditions is in
some way mediated, or contained in some way, by something else. Rosa then argues
that if the two conditions mutually exclude each other, they cannot co-exist,
but this is just an assertion with an appeal to tautological definition. BTW
Rosa's Phd dissertation must be total rubbish, you can tell that straightaway
from the puberal mode of argumentation. The real logical or semantic question
is, under what condition would it make sense (or to be reasonable) to speak of
two opposite conditions which nevertheless presuppose each other? Reflective
dialectical thought goes right back to Heraclitus and even earlier, and there
are many different ways of describing dialectical contradictions and their
further implications, I don't deny that. But the basic idea is quite simple, and
there is no particular mystery about it at all, our facilitary and front office
staff have deal with this sort of thing all the time.

Alas,
dialecticians are always making this mistake. An inconsistency, in its simplest
form, involves two propositions which cannot both be true, but they can both be
false, whereas a contradiction involves two propositions that cannot both be
true and cannot both be false. So, in logic no contradiction (sans phrase) is an
inconsistency, nor vice versa.

This already
shows that Rosa does not grasp formal logic, notwithstanding the brainless
Wittgenstein bullshit, which is a ruse.

And yet you
failed to tell us what the 'dialectical contradiction' is here!

Well, it's very
simple Rosa: just like in Catch-22, what you are dealing with is that in order
to apply the rule, you have to negate the rule, and in order to not apply the
rule, you have to apply the rule. This may seem unprincipled, but in the
bureaucracy there is always a hierarchy of principles which renders such
improvisation legitimate. This situation arises, often, because academics like
Rosa, who styles himself [sic] a "Wittgensteinian Trotskyite", are paid rich
helpings of tax money to devise rule systems and conceptual hierarchies which
cannot in fact be applied, because these so-called "academics" have an extremely
poor understanding of what is actually humanly, socially and practically
involved in a work process or an administrative process. Their task is to
describe what's happening and rendering it meaningful to the ivory tower of
management, Plato's philosopher kings, but this is obviously quite different
from the operative staff who actually have to make things work, and therefore
face dialectical contradictions all the time.

Yes, I know
about "fuzzy logic" and "informal logic", but I fail to see how this helps
anyone understand the obscure phrase "dialectical contradiction".

Here Rosa
misses the point completely. The real point is that non-arbitrary human
reasoning extends far beyond what we can capture in deductive and inductive
inference, and that is just where dialectical reason only begins! But "Rosa" has
no grasp of it at all. Now how can we ever have any constructive discussion when
Rosa doesn't even understand the most elementary problems of reason?

Well, there
is much here I could take issue with, but I won't since it is not directly
connected with the challenge I raised to Andrew -- what the hell is a (Marxist)
'dialectical contradiction'? -- but I notice you keep helping yourself to the
phrase "dialectical contradiction" when it is still far from clear what one of
these is. [Much of the above is in fact an idealist analysis, anyway --, unless,
of course, you can give it a materialist twist somehow. And, good luck there! No
one has succeeded on that score in the last 150 years.]

This is just
puberal, studenty pharisee [sic] crap once again. Of course you are going to be
perpetually puzzled by the normality of "dialectical contradictions" if you deny
their existence tooth and nail! It would be like saying the sun doesn’t exist,
even although everybody thinks the sun does exist, on the ground that most
people cannot adequately "define" the sun in terms of formal logic. Well, big
deal.

Thanks for
that, but I am no clearer -- and since I am interested in a Marxist analysis of
this obscure phrase, I'm not sure you are the person to help me.

Yeah, Rosa does
need help, but he or she "is not sure I am the person to help him or her". When
all else fails, hang out the victim… The hypocrisy is that I already tried to
help him/her, by explaining what a dialectical contradiction is and what the
utility of dialectics is, in plain language, sacrificing the free time that I
have. Then he/she says, "I am not sure". Well, big deal. On to the next one.

And the
Einstein quote you added seems to confirm that you are indeed an Idealist, just
like he was.

This again is a
dumb slur from the nihilist enemy of reason which Rosa is. Einstein as a
physicist was not at all an "idealist", other than having political and human
ideals. Einstein is referring to the fact that our ability to actually test
theories is far more limited than our creative ability to theorize and draw
logical inferences, in part because our ability to construct valid empirical
tests is practically limited, whereas our ability to speculate theoretically in
abstracto is much less limited, so that the effect is, that the amount of
scientific theory we have, is typically disproportionately larger than the
amount of valid scientific evidence to back it up. He suggests that there exists
a series of basic ("axiomatic") assumptions, discovered through creative
inquiry, which, "if" they are true, would explain the scientific evidence we
have, and if we do not have those assumptions, then we cannot explain the
scientific evidence.

This may seem to weaken the possibilities for scientific knowledge, but in fact
armed with these assumptions we are able to explain very much, since we can show
convincingly that predictions made using these assumptions will in most cases
yield confirmation of the assumptions, or are at least consistent with what we
would expect. The point is that these "axiomatic" assumptions cannot themselves
derive simply from the data, though they are informed by them -- the central
problem of dialectical theory – nor are they amenable to a complete proof by the
data. But that is just to say that Einstein, as a scientific realist, rejected a
simplistic empiricist account of the relationship between theory and data,
according to which Hempelian "covering laws" are strictly generalisations from
clusters of sense data. The theory, which contains many logical inferences, and
the data gathered, are for Einstein "semi-autonomous" from each other: they
inform each other but are not reducible to each other. He implies thereby that
the task of science is to bring the theories we have, and the data we produce,
closer together in a rational way, and he expresses his optimism that creative
inquiry can enable us to do this -- possibly, with the belief that, since we are
ourselves part of the universe, we are able to improve our understanding of it.
This contrasts with the skepticist [sic] mysticism of the Popperian view
according to which reality is too complex and variegated, and our abilities too
limited, for us to know very much for certain about it at all, so that most
people are deluded, and all we can do is demolish illusions, even although there
are always far more illusions than we can demolish. Einstein suggests that in
reality people are not so deluded as Karl Popper implies and that the "proof is
in the pudding" ("The skeptic will say: "It may well be true that this system of
equations is reasonable from a logical standpoint. But this does not prove that
it corresponds to nature." You are right, dear skeptic. Experience alone can
decide on truth.") -- if we are able to transform nature consistent with our
explicated theory of it, this is an experiential proof of sorts that we can
really know essential aspects of nature, even if the proof is not an absolute
and final one.

The bourgeois
intellectuals wax with an air of profundity about all the things we cannot know
about "financial risk" and so on, completely ignoring what billions of ordinary
folks are proving by their actions every day! Which just tells us that their
so-called "innocence" (ignorance really) is just feigned, growing out of their
own loves and hates. In the same way, "Rosa" hates "dialectical materialism" and
tries to create an elaborate defence of that hate. But the real scientific
questions are thereby missed altogether. I have never denied that "dialectical
materialism" is a philosophy of Marxist-Leninist bureaucratism, and I have
strongly argued against its totalitarian applications. My views on this issue
are on public record. But it is another thing to deny the existence of the
dialectical characteristics of reality. I am not prepared to do that, in good
part because I experience them every day as a normal occurrence, and to deny
that would be to deny part of reality. Of course I realise that academic
theorists, seeking to be profound, concoct all kinds of nonsense about
dialectics, but this does not deter me at all from acknowledging the dialectical
characteristics which reality can have. It is just that, rather than focusing on
the nonsense, I studied writers like Charles Taylor and Mario Bunge, in other
words people who tried to make some constructive sense of the notion.

I wrote a reply to
this, but it has yet to appear at the MHI site -- they tell me that their site
is being redesigned, so there will be a delay in publishing it. Anyway, here it
is:

Jurriaan, are you addressing me, or your 'followers'?

And why the emotive and abusive response? What have I ever done to you?

But this is a petitio principii, Rosa just assumes what has to be proved.
I defined a dialectical contradiction very clearly, as two opposite conditions
which nevertheless presuppose each other and depend on each other for their
existence, a situation which can exist because the opposition of the two
conditions is in some way mediated, or contained in some way, by something else.

In fact, I
did not "assume" anything, I merely quoted Marx back at you. If you want to pick
a fight with him, that's up to you.

Jurriaan:

Rosa then argues that if the two conditions mutually exclude each other, they
cannot co-exist, but this is just an assertion with an appeal to tautological
definition.

I did not argue this,
Marx did.
I just noted its implications.

[And what is a 'tautological definition', for goodness sake?]

Jurriaan:

BTW Rosa's Phd dissertation must be total rubbish, you can tell that
straightaway from the puberal mode of argumentation [sic].

Well, you
are the one who doesn't
appear to know the difference between aninconsistency and a contradiction, and you seem to think that formal
contradictions are
nonsensical -- so that accusatory finger of
yours needs rotating through 180 degrees. As I noted above, your grasp of logic
doesn't
inspire much confidence.

Jurriaan:

The real logical or semantic question is, under what condition would it make
sense (or to be reasonable) to speak of two opposite conditions which
nevertheless presuppose each other?

But, this in no way helps us understand what you dialecticians are banging on
about when you use the phrase "dialectical contradiction".

Jurriaan:

Reflective dialectical thought goes right back to
Heraclitus and even earlier,
and there are many different ways of describing dialectical contradictions and
their further implications, I don’t deny that. But the basic idea is quite
simple, and there is no particular mystery about it at all, our facilitary [sic]
and front office staff have deal with this sort of thing all the time.

Alas, Heraclitus was a seriously confused mystic, who, among other things, thought that
he could determine what was true of all moving objects and/or processes in the
entire universe, for all of time, based on a badly executed thought experiment
about stepping into a river!

like this has dominated much of 'western' thought ever since,
including the tangled mess Hegel inflicted on humanity (whom you seem happy to
emulate).

Jurriaan:

This already shows that Rosa does not grasp formal logic, notwithstanding the
brainless Wittgenstein bullshit, which is a ruse.

Oh dear, you are really getting worked-up, aren't you?

Do you by any chance suffer from low impulse control?

I'd get that seen to if I were you.

In reply to your flat denial, I can quote you as many logic textbooks as it
takes that will tell you exactly what I have told you about the difference
between a contradiction and an inconsistency (why, even Aristotle distinguished
between them!).

Can you do the same?

I suspect not.

And this isn't a Wittgensteinian point, either; as I noted above, logicians since at least
Aristotle's day have acknowledged it.

Nevertheless, I must say, I rather like the fine, dialectically-complex word you used
in your searching, well-reasoned response to me.

What was it again? -- Oh yes: "Bullshit".

So incisive!

I can see I stand no chance with one as erudite and incisive as your good self.

But, may I remind you: you were the one who appealed to Wittgenstein in your
first reply to me. So, what is all this about 'Wittgensteinian bullshit' in this
latest response of yours?
Don't you even know your own mind?

Jurriaan (addressing me now -- I am honoured!):

Well, it's very simple Rosa: just like in Catch-22, what you are dealing with
is that in order to apply the rule, you have to negate the rule, and in order to
not apply the rule, you have to apply the rule. This may seem unprincipled, but
in the bureaucracy there is always a hierarchy of principles which renders such
improvisation legitimate. This situation arises, often, because academics like
Rosa, who styles himself a 'Wittgensteinian Trotskyite', are paid rich helpings
of tax money to devise rule systems and conceptual hierarchies which cannot in
fact be applied, because these so-called 'academics' have an extremely poor
understanding of what is actually humanly, socially and practically involved in
a work process or an administrative process. Their task is to describe what’s
happening and rendering it meaningful to the ivory tower of management, Plato's
philosopher kings, but this is obviously quite different from the operative
staff who actually have to make things work, and therefore face dialectical
contradictions all the time.

In fact, I'm
not an academic, but a worker, and a trade union rep (unpaid), too. So, the
above comment of yours is just hot air. But, you clearly needed to get it off
your chest.
Feel better now?

Anyway, you'd do well to concentrate on what I actually say, and resist the
temptation to make baseless personal attacks on me from a position of total
ignorance.

Hey, but what do I know? After all, you are the expert logician here.
Maybe
abusive and foul language, compounded by invention, lies, and invective constitute a new,
and valid, argument form?

'Jurriaan's
Lemma', perhaps?

Jurriaan (again back to addressing his rapidly dwindling audience):

Here Rosa
misses the point completely. The real point is that non-arbitrary human
reasoning extends far beyond what we can capture in deductive and inductive
inference, and that is just where dialectical reason only begins! But 'Rosa' has
no grasp of it at all. Now how can we ever have any constructive discussion when
Rosa doesn't even understand the most elementary problems of reason?

And where did I deny that "human reasoning extends far beyond what we can
capture in deductive and inductive inference..."?

Nowhere, that's where.

Even so, I see you still can't resist the temptation to make stuff up.

And, may I remind you, once again, that you are the one who can't tell the
difference between an
inconsistency and a contradiction, and you seem to think
that formal contradictions arenonsensical-- so I don't think you have good
reason to indulge in any chest-beating, impressive though it is!

[Phew, what a 'guy', eh, girls...?!]

This is just puberal, studenty pharisee
[sic] crap once again. Of course you are going to be
perpetually puzzled by the normality of 'dialectical contradictions' if you deny
their existence tooth and nail! It would be like saying the sun doesn't exist,
even although everybody thinks the sun does exist, on the ground that most
people cannot adequately 'define' the sun in terms of formal logic. Well, big
deal.

We can all learn much from this dialectical sage. [I'm certainly taking notes!]

But, wait! Where did I ask for a definition, or even one expressed in 'Formal Logic'?

I note once again, however, that you didn't even try to quote me to this effect -- better
just to make it all up, eh?

Indeed, I can quite imagine a benighted Jesuit soul rather like you arguing with
Galileo about the Copernican system, four hundred years ago:

'Seventeenth-century-Jurriaan':

Of course you are going to be perpetually puzzled by the normality of a
stationary earth, if you deny its existence tooth and nail! It would be like
saying the sun doesn't exist, even although everybody thinks the sun does exist,
on the ground that most people cannot adequately 'define' the sun in terms of
formal logic. Well, big deal. And no, I won't look down your telescope. That is
just puberal, studenty pharisee crap once again.

And look what happened to those sad dinosaurs. I'd hate to think you
are headed
in the same direction, even though it looks like you are intent on doing just
that.

Don't say I didn't warn you...

Jurriaan -- working 'himself' up into a right old lather (crash team on
stand-by!):

Yeah, Rosa does need help, but he or she 'is not sure I am the person to help
him or her'. When all else fails, hang out the victim… The hypocrisy is that I
already tried to help him/her, by explaining what a dialectical contradiction is
and what the utility of dialectics is, in plain language, sacrificing the free
time that I have. Then he/she says, 'I am not sure'. Well, big deal. On to the
next one.

But, you didn't explain what a 'dialectical contradiction' is
(you explained some other sort of 'contradiction'), since youmissed
out a key Marxist component, which in fact makes the whole 'concept' implode.

So, not only are you not the person to help me, you aren't even the
person to help yourself! That is because you don't seem to understand your own
'theory'!

Jurriaan -- now in full waffle Hyperdrive:

This again is a dumb slur from the nihilist enemy of reason which Rosa is.
Einstein as a physicist was not at all an 'idealist', other than having
political and human ideals. Einstein is referring to the fact that our ability
to actually test theories is far more limited than our creative ability to
theorize and draw logical inferences, in part because our ability to construct
valid empirical tests is practically limited, whereas our ability to speculate
theoretically in abstracto is much less limited, so that the effect is, that the
amount of scientific theory we have, is typically disproportionately larger than
the amount of valid scientific evidence to back it up. He suggests that there
exists a series of basic ('axiomatic') assumptions, discovered through creative
inquiry, which, 'if' they are true, would explain the scientific evidence we
have, and if we do not have those assumptions, then we cannot explain the
scientific evidence. This may seem to weaken the possibilities for scientific
knowledge, but in fact armed with these assumptions we are able to explain very
much, since we can show convincingly that predictions made using these
assumptions will in most cases yield confirmation of the assumptions, or are at
least consistent with what we would expect. The point is that these 'axiomatic'
assumptions cannot themselves derive simply from the data, though they are
informed by them – the central problem of dialectical theory – nor are they
amenable to a complete proof by the data. But that is just to say that Einstein,
as a scientific realist, rejected a simplistic empiricist account of the
relationship between theory and data, according to which Hempelian 'covering
laws are strictly generalisations from clusters of sense data. The theory, which
contains many logical inferences, and the data gathered, are for Einstein
'semi-autonomous' from each other: they inform each other but are not reducible
to each other. He implies thereby that the task of science is to bring the
theories we have, and the data we produce, closer together in a rational way,
and he expresses his optimism that creative inquiry can enable us to do this –
possibly, with the belief that, since we are ourselves part of the universe, we
are able to improve our understanding of it. This contrasts with the skepticist
mysticism of the Popperian view according to which reality is too complex and
variegated, and our abilities too limited, for us to know very much for certain
about it at all, so that most people are deluded, and all we can do is demolish
illusions, even although there are always far more illusions than we can
demolish. Einstein suggests that in reality people are not so deluded as Karl
Popper implies and that the “proof is in the pudding” ('The skeptic will say:
"It may well be true that this system of equations is reasonable from a logical
standpoint. But this does not prove that it corresponds to nature." You are
right, dear skeptic. Experience alone can decide on truth.') – if we are able to
transform nature consistent with our explicated theory of it, this is an
experiential proof of sorts that we can really know essential aspects of nature,
even if the proof is not an absolute and final one.

Thanks for
that, but it in no way shows Einstein wasn't an idealist. Even so, since I don't want to distract attention from your predicament (in so far as you can't explain the obscure phrase "dialectical
contradiction" to eagerly waiting humanity), I will give you this one for now.
We can debate it another time.

Jurriaan -- the veins in 'his' neck bulging alarmingly:

The bourgeois intellectuals wax with an air of profundity about all the things
we cannot know about 'financial risk' and so on, completely ignoring what
billions of ordinary folks are proving by their actions every day! Which just
tells us that their so-called “innocence” (ignorance really) is just feigned,
growing out of their own loves and hates. In the same way, 'Rosa' hates
'dialectical materialism' and tries to create an elaborate defence of that hate.
But the real scientific questions are thereby missed altogether. I have never
denied that 'dialectical materialism' is a philosophy of Marxist-Leninist bureaucratism,
and I have strongly argued against its totalitarian applications. My views on
this issue are on public record. But it is another thing to deny the existence
of the dialectical characteristics of reality. I am not prepared to do that, in
good part because I experience them every day as a normal occurrence, and to
deny that would be to deny part of reality. Of course I realise that academic
theorists, seeking to be profound, concoct all kinds of nonsense about
dialectics, but this does not deter me at all from acknowledging the dialectical
characteristics which reality can have. It is just that, rather than focusing on
the nonsense, I studied writers like Charles Taylor and Mario Bunge, in other
words people who tried to make some constructive sense of the notion.

Translated this reads: "Sorry, I can't explain what a 'dialectical
contradiction' is, so I will just kick up a cloud of dust to hide that fact...".

As I said in my reply to
Rakesh: at least have the courage to admit this openly!

It will at least mean we can stand that crash team down.

PS. If anyone wants to know why dialecticians are almost all invariably like
Jurriaan here (emotive, irrational and abusive) when their precious 'theory' is
attacked, I have provided a detailed explanation here.

PPS. Jurriaan: I have added
a link at my site to your reply to me since I
am building up a database there of all the abusive and obnoxious dialecticians
(scores of them, in fact; the overwhelming majority of whom are just as
unpleasant and abusive as you are -- the vast majority adopting this stance without any provocation, too) with whom I have debated
this 'theory' over the last four years on the Internet.

Since my Essays will long outlast you, I have guaranteed that your rather
unpleasant personality disorder will never slip from memory.

So I owe you thanks for supplying me with yet more bile..., sorry, data!

Any more vitriol in there? Let it out -- it all adds to my site!

Have a nice fume...

Since
then, several others have briefly discussed this debate
here (to find the relevant posts just type "Rosa Lichtenstein" in the search
window) -- and one or two of them appear to have swallowed 'Socialist
Steve's' lunatic belief that I am in fact a computer programme!

[Given that
'Socialist Steve' thinks that when I refer to the "alien-class ideas of the
ruling-class" I am in fact labouring with the illusion that the ruling-class are
shape-shifting lizards, I think we can take his allegations with a bucket of salt.
(The 'academic Marxists' at the above link seem not to have noticed that this sad character has
mental health problems.)]

For a scholarly
argument in public space, a pseudonym is not acceptable, especially if the
controversy is a purely theoretical or scientific one. I regard many of the
claims by "Rose Lichtenstein" as fraudulent. If in addition "Rosa" boasts about
his/her Phd Thesis on Wittgenstein, then we want to be able to refer to it. I
can tell it isn't any good, because of the very elementary mistakes "Rosa" makes
in his/her argumentation. Anybody who has a profound understanding of
Wittgenstein would never make such schoolboy errors. The aim of "Rosa" seems to
be to "debunk" every claim mooted about dialectics regardless of merit,
presumably to show how fantastically intelligent he/she is. But that will not
wash here. It is not possible to be a "Wittgensteinian Trotskyist" because in
reality Wittgenstein's philosophy and Trotsky's philosophy are not compatible,
even if Wittgenstein expressed sympathy for the RCP in Britain at some point.
The only reason for replying to this nonsense is to demonstrate it is misguided.

Hegel wrote in
his encyclopedia:

The
principles of the metaphysical philosophy gave rise to the belief that, when
cognition lapsed into contradictions, it was a mere accidental aberration, due
to some subjective mistake in argument and inference. According to Kant,
however, thought has a natural tendency to issue in contradictions or
antinomies, whenever it seeks to apprehend the infinite. We have in the latter
part of the above paragraph referred to the philosophical importance of the
antinomies of reason, and shown how the recognition of their existence helped
largely to get rid of the rigid dogmatism of the metaphysic of understanding,
and to direct attention to the Dialectical movement of thought. But here too
Kant, as we must add, never got beyond the negative result that the
thing-in-itself is unknowable, and never penetrated to the discovery of what the
antinomies really and positively mean. That true and positive meaning of the
antinomies is this: that every actual thing involves a coexistence of opposed
elements. Consequently to know, or, in other words, to comprehend an object is
equivalent to being conscious of it as a concrete unity of opposed
determinations. The old metaphysic, as we have already seen, when it studied the
objects of which it sought a metaphysical knowledge, went to work by applying
categories abstractly and to the exclusion of their opposites.

This idea, i.e. that contradictions are not an "aberration" but are a result of
different conflicting forces which give rise to it, is carried through by Marx's
critical thought, according to which the "aberration" is itself not accidental
or indeterminate, but a result of the very terms in which the solution to a
problem is posed, and that these terms in turn result from a real conflict
between co-existing conditions which give rise to the conflicting terms in the
first place. The analysis of the contradictions themselves therefore forms the
starting point for understanding the intrinsic problems of the subject matter.
This is an eminently critical-rational principle, which is of metho[do]logical
interest. But when Hegel further argues that "that every actual thing involves a
coexistence of opposed elements" this is a universal metaphysical statement
which cannot be scientifically proved. Yet Marx nowhere claims this to be the
case anyway, at most he argues that it is useful to understanding a thing in
terms of its contradictions if you want to understand its dynamics.

Wittgenstein's
idea is that a contradiction like "p &-p" is equivalent to a tautology like "-(p
& -p)" not because it is nonsensical, but meaningless -- because it says
nothing, which is precisely what Hegel, Marx and Trotsky contest: contradictions
are meaningful, if considered in the broader context within which they occur, a
context which enables us to understand how the contradiction arises, and thus
enables us to ascend to an understanding of the totality being expressed in
contradictory ways. The Aristotelian "law of non-contradiction" is not
interpreted by Wittgenstein as the expression "-(p & -p)" itself, but rather as a
rule which PROHIBITS any such expression, and that is also "Rosa's" idea. But in
fact "Rosa" falls from one contradiction into another.

Wittgenstein,
committed to deductive logic, is not disturbed by contradictions per se; viewed
as logical inconsistencies they play an important role, e.g. in reductio ad
absurdum arguments which specify consequences of an argument which would be
untenable to the person who makes the argument. Wittgenstein aims to show, that
certain reasonings are to be ruled out of meaningful discourse precisely BECAUSE
they are contradictory. The problem, in his view, is with recurrent
transgressions of the law of non-contradiction, such as the failure to abandon
any idea which implies a contradiction immediately. There is no such thing for
Wittgenstein as a "contradictory rule", because it could not tell one what to
do, and provides no orientation (anything can follow from it), and "a
contradictory proposition is no more a move in the language-game than placing
and withdrawing a piece from a square is a move in chess" (Hans-Johan Glock,
A Wittgenstein Dictionary, Blackwell 1996). But if that was the case, in
real life we e.g. might as well abandon the very idea of legal justice, since
the application of legal rules in practice invariably leads to contradictions,
which, precisely, a court aims to resolve.

The root
meaning of dialectics is dialogos, dialogue, and the aim of the dialogue
is to discover the truth by taking the opposites involved seriously, rather than
deny them as meaningless. But obviously no genuine dialogue is possible, if
there is no shared ground at all, because the parties to the dialogue deny the
validity of the opposite position completely, and rule it out from meaningful
discourse. Analytical philosophy had the grandiose pretension that it was
possible for the "philosopher kings" to devise logical "demarcation criteria"
which would sort out meaningful from meaningless statements, but this idea rests
on a naive understanding of meaning. The dialectician's argument is precisely
that any such demarcation criteria can only be established precisely through the
encounter of opposites within a particular context, but there is no demarcation
rule possible for the existence of meaning independent of that context.

Looks like Jurriaan
has done some hasty 'research' on Wittgenstein (stretching as far a Hanjo
Glock's A Wittgenstein Dictionary -- no effort spared there, then!),
and yet he has already forgotten that in his first reply to me he called
contradictions "nonsense";
now he says this about them:

Wittgenstein's
idea is that a contradiction like "p &-p" is equivalent to a tautology like "-(p
& -p)" not because it is nonsensical, but meaningless -- because
it says nothing, which is precisely what Hegel, Marx and Trotsky contest:
contradictions are meaningful, if considered in the broader context within which
they occur, a context which enables us to understand how the contradiction
arises, and thus enables us to ascend to an understanding of the totality being
expressed in contradictory ways. The Aristotelian "law of non-contradiction" is
not interpreted by Wittgenstein as the expression "-(p & -p)" itself, but rather as a
rule which PROHIBITS any such expression, and that is also "Rosa's" idea. But in
fact "Rosa" falls from one contradiction into another.

[In fact, this is
almost a word-for-word copy of key sections of the first paragraph in Glock's entry on
'Contradiction' (p.90), except Jurriaan has replaced "senseless" with
"meaningless", not apparently knowing the difference!]

Jurriaan seems not to
be able to make his mind up, and yet he is at pains to take me to task in the
following terms:

If in addition
"Rosa" boasts about his/her Phd Thesis on Wittgenstein, then we want to be able
to refer to it. I can tell it isn't any good, because of the very elementary
mistakes "Rosa" makes in his/her argumentation. Anybody who has a
profound understanding of Wittgenstein would never make such schoolboy errors.

This is unfortunate,
for had Jurriaan done his homework better (and spent more than two hours boning
up on Wittgenstein), he'd know that Wittgenstein nowhere says contradictions are
"meaningless". In the Tractatus he says they are like tautologies,
senseless (Sinnlos), and had he read Glock's Dictionary with more
care than a schoolboy with attention deficit disorder, he'd have seen that Glock
is at pains to explain what Wittgenstein meant by this word (and it isn't
"meaningless"). Indeed, if contradictions were "meaningless" we'd not be able to
tell they were contradictions!

And, as far as my
'schoolboy errors' are concerned, we have already seen above that Jurriaan
doesn't seem to know the difference between a
contradiction and an
inconsistency; well, this is only to be expected; he is after all a social
scientist, and is clearly out of his depth when it comes to difficult subjects
like Philosophy and Logic. In fact, I suspect he'd be out of his depth in a tea
spoon.

But Which One
Is Too Deep For Jurriaan?

[The Smart Money Is On Moka.]

What about the following, though?

For a scholarly
argument in public space, a pseudonym is not acceptable, especially if the
controversy is a purely theoretical or scientific one. I regard many of the
claims by "Rose Lichtenstein" as fraudulent.

This from a
comrade who is quite happy to refer us to Trotsky (who, of course, wasn't born with
that name)!

Anyway, which of my 'claims' are 'fraudulent'? Our very own Weekend
Wittgenstein Scholar refuses to say. Nevertheless, this Superior Logician
thinks that a brief discussion on a website constitutes a 'scholarly
argument' -- well, he should know, he can't even get Wittgenstein right!

You want more proof?
Ok:

It is not
possible to be a "Wittgensteinian Trotskyist" because in reality Wittgenstein's
philosophy and Trotsky's philosophy are not compatible, even if Wittgenstein
expressed sympathy for the RCP in Britain at some point.

In fact, it was
Rush Rhees
who expressed a desire to join the RCP; Wittgenstein passed no comment on this
party (except perhaps to caution Rhees to think again). [More details
here.]

And, far from it being
the case that "It is not possible to
be a 'Wittgensteinian Trotskyist' because in reality Wittgenstein's philosophy
and Trotsky's philosophy are not compatible...", my site shows that it is indeed
possible, if not desirable. Dialectical Trotskyism has been such a long-term and
abysmal failure, it is high time Trotskyist 'philosophy' was extricated from the
mystical
quagmire in which comrades like Jurriaan seem to happy to keep it.

What
about this, then?

The aim of
"Rosa" seems to be to "debunk" every claim mooted about dialectics regardless of
merit, presumably to show how fantastically intelligent he/she [sic] is.

Alas, there is no
'merit' to a single dialectical thesis (as my
Essays show), so no wonder I want to
'debunk' the lot. And, it isn't hard to look "fantastically intelligent" next
to one such as Jurriaan. I owe him that, at least.

But, what can our very
own King
Canute, Jurriaan, do to hold back the tide of history?

This, apparently:

But that will not wash here.

Ouch! That puts me in my place!
It's about time somebody did.

Canute, eat your heart out!

Ok, but what about that Hegel quote?

The principles
of the metaphysical philosophy gave rise to the belief that, when cognition
lapsed into contradictions, it was a mere accidental aberration, due to some
subjective mistake in argument and inference. According to Kant, however,
thought has a natural tendency to issue in contradictions or antinomies,
whenever it seeks to apprehend the infinite. We have in the latter part of the
above paragraph referred to the philosophical importance of the antinomies of
reason, and shown how the recognition of their existence helped largely to get
rid of the rigid dogmatism of the metaphysic of understanding, and to direct
attention to the Dialectical movement of thought. But here too Kant, as we must
add, never got beyond the negative result that the thing-in-itself is
unknowable, and never penetrated to the discovery of what the antinomies really
and positively mean. That true and positive meaning of the antinomies is this:
that every actual thing involves a coexistence of opposed elements. Consequently
to know, or, in other words, to comprehend an object is equivalent to being
conscious of it as a concrete unity of opposed determinations. The old
metaphysic, as we have already seen, when it studied the objects of which it
sought a metaphysical knowledge, went to work by applying categories abstractly
and to the exclusion of their opposites.

As I have argued (here,
here, and
here), the sub-Aristotelian logic
Hegel appropriated (whereby he confused the "is" of identity with the "is" of
predication, and the 'negative' version of the 'Law of Identity' [LOI] with the
'Law of Contradiction' [LOC]) was in fact the only way he could 'derive' his rather odd 'contradictions'.

[That was indeed the subject of the debate I
had with Andrew Kliman at MHI -- Jurriaan conveniently ignores this fact.]

Even so, while Hegel
is quick to criticise the alleged "dogmatism" of the "metaphysic of
understanding", he is quite happy to replace it with his own brand of dogmatic
apriorism:

Consequently to
know, or, in other words, to comprehend an object is equivalent to being
conscious of it as a concrete unity of opposed determinations. The old
metaphysic, as we have already seen, when it studied the objects of which it
sought a metaphysical knowledge, went to work by applying categories abstractly
and to the exclusion of their opposites.

Of course, the wise
thing to do here is to reject both forms of dogmatism as yet more ruling-class
hot air. [The rationale for that seemingly dogmatic recommendation is
worked out in considerable detail in Essay Twelve
Part One. How and why this is
just another example of ruling-class ideology will be explained in the rest of
Essay Twelve -- not yet published. Preliminary summaries of that argument can be
found here,
here and
here.]

However, Jurriaan
should have turned his dyspeptic eye on the arguments of that bourgeois hack,
Hegel, and not on the comments of a fellow comrade. Or, is he, like far too many
Dialectical Marxists, far more intent on defending a flawed, boss-class tradition than he is on
trying to make Marxism more scientific, more successful?

Jurriaan then adds the
following observation:

This idea, i.e.
that contradictions are not an "aberration" but are a result of different
conflicting forces which give rise to it, is carried through by Marx's critical
thought, according to which the "aberration" is itself not accidental or
indeterminate, but a result of the very terms in which the solution to a problem
is posed, and that these terms in turn result from a real conflict between
co-existing conditions which give rise to the conflicting terms in the first
place. The analysis of the contradictions themselves therefore forms the
starting point for understanding the intrinsic problems of the subject matter.
This is an eminently critical-rational principle, which is of metho[do]logical
interest. But when Hegel further argues that "that every actual thing involves a
coexistence of opposed elements" this is a universal metaphysical statement
which cannot be scientifically proved. Yet Marx nowhere claims this to be the
case anyway, at most he argues that it is useful to understanding a thing in
terms of its contradictions if you want to understand its dynamics.

Except, we still
don't know what these 'contradictions' are! The 'definition' Jurriaan used
omitted a key phrase Marx himself employed (i.e., that the elements of these
'contradictions' "mutually exclude" one another; on that,
see above, and
here),
which means that this 'definition' (even if it faced no other problems) is unworkable. Moreover, the idea that these
'contradictions' can be represented by "conflicting forces" has already been
laid to rest in Essay Eight Part Two.

[It looks like Jurriaan's
'research' into his own 'theory' was only marginally less incompetent than his
two-hour 'research' into Wittgenstein's ideas.]

And, as far as this
comment is concerned:

But when Hegel
further argues that "that every actual thing involves a coexistence of opposed
elements" this is a universal metaphysical statement which cannot be
scientifically proved. Yet Marx nowhere claims this to be the case anyway, at
most he argues that it is useful to understanding a thing in terms of its
contradictions if you want to understand its dynamics.

The
problem is that this 'theory' can't actually explain change! [The proof of that
startling claim can be found
here.]

In fact, ordinary language already possesses
countless words that allow us to talk about and to explain change. This is no mere dogma; it is easily confirmed.
As I pointed in Essay Four
Part One, the
following is
a greatly shortened list of ordinary words (restricted to modernEnglish) that allow speakers to refer to changes of unbounded
complexity:

t wouldn't be difficult to
extend this list until it contained literally tens of thousands of words
all capable of depicting countless changes in limitless detail (especially if it
is augmented with the language of mathematics, science and Historical
Materialism). It is only a
myth put about by Hegel and his dialectical groupies that ordinary
language can't cope with change. On the contrary, it performs this task
far better than the incomprehensible and impenetrably obscure jargon
Hegel invented in order to fix something that wasn't broken.

What about this, then?

Wittgenstein's
idea is that a contradiction like "p &-p" is equivalent to a tautology like "-(p
& -p)" not because it is nonsensical, but meaningless -- because it says
nothing, which is precisely what Hegel, Marx and Trotsky contest: contradictions
are meaningful, if considered in the broader context within which they occur, a
context which enables us to understand how the contradiction arises, and thus
enables us to ascend to an understanding of the totality being expressed in
contradictory ways. The Aristotelian "law of non-contradiction" is not
interpreted by Wittgenstein as the expression "-(p & -p)" itself, but rather as a
rule which PROHIBITS any such expression, and that is also "Rosa's" idea. But in
fact "Rosa" falls from one contradiction into another.

Of course, Jurriaan is
referring to Wittgenstein's early ideas on this subject (and, as we saw
above, he gets even these wrong!). In his middle and later work
Wittgenstein
modified his ideas considerably, to such an extent that
Dialetheic Logicians (like
Graham
Priest)
even quote him in support of the idea that there can be true
'contradictions'! Now, I disagree with Priest about this (on that, see
here and
here), but Jurriaan's
'in-depth', two hour 'research' on Wittgenstein has plainly back-fired, once
again.

However, what of the
claim that I wish to "PROHIBIT" contradictions -- or even that Wittgenstein
did? Well, I agree that in logic, the
so-called LOC is in
fact the expression of a rule, but it doesn't "PROHIBIT"
contradictions, since they are integral both to Reductio Ad Absurdum
arguments (as Jurriaan also notes) and to Indirect Proofs (in mathematics). Hence, far from being "PROHIBITED", modern
logicians use them all the time. So do I. [In fact, I use informal versions extensively in
Essay Twelve Part One.] And we
have already seen that Wittgenstein didn't do this either; in fact he did the
exact opposite.

As far as ordinary
language is concerned, the situation is far more complex, and readers are
referred to my discussion
here,
here,
here,
here,
here, and
here.
Nevertheless, Jurriaan will be hard pressed to find anywhere in my Essays and
posts where I have "PROHIBITED" contradictions, but that didn't stop him
inventing yet another baseless allegation about me and my work (when it is
clear he hasn't even read it).

Alas, there is more:

Wittgenstein,
committed to deductive logic, is not disturbed by contradictions per se;
viewed as logical inconsistencies they play an important role, e.g. in
reductio ad absurdum arguments which specify consequences of an argument
which would be untenable to the person who makes the argument. Wittgenstein aims
to show, that certain reasonings are to be ruled out of meaningful discourse
precisely BECAUSE they are contradictory. The problem, in his view, is with
recurrent transgressions of the law of non-contradiction, such as the failure to
abandon any idea which implies a contradiction immediately. There is no such
thing for Wittgenstein as a "contradictory rule", because it could not tell one
what to do, and provides no orientation (anything can follow from it), and "a
contradictory proposition is no more a move in the language-game than placing
and withdrawing a piece from a square is a move in chess" (Hans-Johan Glock,
A Wittgenstein Dictionary, Blackwell 1996). But if that was the case, in
real life we e.g. might as well abandon the very idea of legal justice, since
the application of legal rules in practice invariably leads to contradictions,
which, precisely, a court aims to resolve.

Even so, it would be
no less interesting to see precisely where Jurriaan thinks Wittgenstein
maintained the following:

Wittgenstein
aims to show, that certain reasonings are to be ruled out of meaningful
discourse precisely BECAUSE they are contradictory. The problem, in his view, is
with recurrent transgressions of the law of non-contradiction, such as the
failure to abandon any idea which implies a contradiction immediately.

On that
score, he refers us to Glock's Dictionary in support (this being all he
seems to have read on the subject):

There is no
such thing for Wittgenstein as a "contradictory rule", because it could not tell
one what to do, and provides no orientation (anything can follow from it), and
"a contradictory proposition is no more a move in the language-game than placing
and withdrawing a piece from a square is a move in chess" (Hans-Johan Glock,
A Wittgenstein Dictionary, Blackwell 1996).

Jurriaan ignores the
fact that Wittgenstein actually acknowledges the possibility of contradictory
rules (indeed, he and
Alan Turing
locked horns over
precisely this), but he says that in practice we get around them with all
sorts of ad hoc adjustments -- exactly as Jurriaan himself allows:

But if that was
the case, in real life we e.g. might as well abandon the very idea of legal
justice, since the application of legal rules in practice invariably leads to
contradictions, which, precisely, a court aims to resolve.

In fact, had Jurriaan
read Glock's Dictionary with more care than he devotes to picking his
nose, he'd have seen this very point was in fact made on pages 90-92!

But, what has this got
to do with my work? Nothing at all! This is one area where I disagree
with Wittgenstein (as, indeed, does Glock). Yet more wasted effort on Jurriaan's part,
then.

Finally, we have this:

The root
meaning of dialectics is dialogos, dialogue, and the aim of the dialogue
is to discover the truth by taking the opposites involved seriously, rather than
deny them as meaningless. But obviously no genuine dialogue is possible, if
there is no shared ground at all, because the parties to the dialogue deny the
validity of the opposite position completely, and rule it out from meaningful
discourse. Analytical philosophy had the grandiose pretension that it was
possible for the "philosopher kings" to devise logical "demarcation criteria"
which would sort out meaningful from meaningless statements, but this idea rests
on a naive understanding of meaning. The dialectician's argument is precisely
that any such demarcation criteria can only be established precisely through the
encounter of opposites within a particular context, but there is no demarcation
rule possible for the existence of meaning independent of that context.

Much of this I
have already dealt with, and yet,
for all his bluster, Jurriaan is quite happy to take advice from a Professor of
Philosophy: that "philosopher king", Hegel!

This, however, is
worthy of comment:

Analytical
philosophy had the grandiose pretension that it was possible for the
"philosopher kings" to devise logical "demarcation criteria" which would sort
out meaningful from meaningless statements, but this idea rests on a naive
understanding of meaning.

I have lost count of
the number of times I have read allegations like this from Dialectical Marxists, who,
almost to a clone, seem to think that Analytic Philosophy [AP] is
identical with
Logical Positivism [LP], which, along with
Logical
Atomism and
Logical Empiricism, was the only branch of AP that made some attempt to establish such criteria. But,
LP was just one branch of AP, and was in its heyday
sixty or seventy years ago; Jurriaan will be hard pressed again to find any
other branch of AP (saving those mentioned above) that went down this route. In fact,
this is, in its own small way, the
dialectical equivalent of maligning, say, Trotskyism for the sins of Stalinism!

The
dialectician's argument is precisely that any such demarcation criteria can only
be established precisely through the encounter of opposites within a particular
context, but there is no demarcation rule possible for the existence of meaning
independent of that context.

Precisely how these
'criteria' will emerge from this process Jurriaan leaves conveniently vague.
But, he isn't exactly the non-existent deity's gift to clarity, is he?

So, and once more, here
we have yet another dialectician who is incapable of telling us what a 'dialectical
contradiction' is, but who is instead quite happy to make stuff up, divert
attention and descend
into invective and abuse in order to hide that fact.